Music and dancing and childlike games made the old house gay.

And the Hill gratefully acknowledged to Mrs.Poyntz, "that the Ashleighs were indeed a great acquisition." But my happiness was not uncheckered.

In thus unselfishly surrounding Lilian with others, I felt the anguish of that jealousy which is inseparable from those earlier stages of love, when the lover as yet has won no right to that self-confidence which can only spring from the assurance that he is loved.
In these social reunions I remained aloof from Lilian.

I saw her courted by the gay young admirers whom her beauty and her fortune drew around her,--her soft face brightening in the exercise of the dance, which the gravity of my profession rather than my years forbade to join; and her laugh, so musically subdued, ravishing my ear and fretting my heart as if the laugh were a mockery on my sombre self and my presumptuous dreams.

But no, suddenly, shyly, her eyes would steal away from those about her, steal to the corner in which I sat, as if they missed me, and, meeting my own gaze, their light softened before they turned away; and the colour on her cheek would deepen, and to her lip there came a smile different from the smile that it shed on others.